littlemann
by Littlemann
Summary: The story of Douglas Rattmann and Greg [REDACTED] as they scurry about Aperture's underbelly in the wake GLaDOS, taking place in the desperate weeks and months leading up to Chell's revival. These characters' mysterious past and present circumstances come to light as they wander through the darkness, searching for solutions to their own insurmountable problems.
1. Prologue, part 1

A dull boom shook the dust off the walls of the massive concrete room. Another one was much closer, and a few panels fell. A third explosion ripped a hole in the ceiling, and daylight burst into the wide chamber. Cement and metal fell in heaps, and crashing sounds echoed for minutes. Finally, the vast chamber fell silent.

"Is that it?" said a nasally male voice, impatiently.

"Yes, Teach," said a frustrated female voice.

"Wait, really?!" The nasally male voice, Teach, didn't think these ex-military jocks would really be able to do it.

His head peeped over the edge of the hole.

"Holy shit," he breathed.

"Need your inhaler, doc?" said a husky, deep male voice.

"I don't have asthma, Jason."

"Whatever." Jason looked into the chamber as well. "Holy shit." His voice bounced around for what seemed like an eternity.

"What's it look like?" asked the female voice, named Heather.

"I need more light."

Heather handed him a powerful flashlight. Teach was almost drooling with anticipation. He shone it into the chamber for a few minutes. The other three members of the team waited. Finally, Teach spoke.

"There's only so much I can see from up here…This light doesn't even go all the way to the bottom. We must be on top of…" He considered being candid with his teammates. It wasn't a hard decision. "…an _especially_ tall chamber."

The leader of this small team reached over the small hole. Someone standing below them would have seen a hand in a fingerless glove offering a bouquet of glow sticks.

"You didn't tell me you had glow sticks!" Teach said bitterly.

The leader didn't respond.

"Thanks," Teach muttered. He tried to snap the glow sticks all at once, but he wasn't strong enough. Jason tried not to laugh. Heather didn't even try. She grabbed them, snapped them all and gave them back. Teach bitterly took them and dropped them into the hole.

"Can we please try to not be so rude?" Teach snarled. Heather smiled and shook her head.

Out of the five glow sticks, four hit the ground with a light "thump." But one hit something relatively small—the size of a basketball, maybe—and a metallic clang echoed up through the chamber and into Teach's ears.

"Oh God. That took a long time. Wait…" Teach consulted his map.

"Well?" asked Heather. "Is it safe to go down?"

"Just give me a second!"

"Are we at Aperture?" asked Jason.

"W—Yes, of course we're at Aperture, but…a very, _very_ tall chamber. I don't know about this…I've been dreaming of it for years, but now that I'm here…"

"Scared?" Heather asked.

Teach, who had given up insisting that he was to be called "Dr. Teach," looked at her gravely, with a seriousness that all the legendary former employees of Black Mesa carried with them. "You have no idea what's down there."

Heather sighed and took a rope out of her backpack.

"You're going to climb down?!" Teach shouted. He clasped his hand over his mouth, then whispered, "You don't know what's down there!"

"It's been sealed for decades," Heather reassured. "What the hell could be down there?"

"Radiation! Robots, almost definitely there'll be robots. Even Combine, maybe."

"Oh, come on."

"We don't know what happened, Heather! We don't know _how_ those scientists died! Could've been, I don't know, nanobots, poison gas, genetic experiments gone wrong. And that rope's not going to be nearly long enough. We need to go back to base, regroup! I need to tell people what we—"

"Not an option. Base is three days away, and it's probably ashes by now. You _are_ right about something, though. Everyone, give me your ropes."

The team, except for Teach, proceeded to do so. "Please, Heather! We at least need to make camp, do research!"

"How long?"

"A-A week, at the _very_ least!"

"Hmm. No."

"At least—Adrian, give her one of your gas mask things."

"Sorry," said Adrian Shephard, who was sitting opposite the two. "Only have the one."

"Well then you certainly have to let this chamber air out. Adrian, you know something about repelling into scientific facilities."

Jason put his hand to his mouth. Heather looked down at her ropes.

Adrian leapt right over the hole, standing right in front of Teach and towering over him.

"Black Mesa was different. There are no fucking aliens down there."

"But—"

"The Combine haven't found this place, which means it might be the last place on Earth untouched by them. I'm not going to sit here jerking off when I could be exploring _miles_ of free planet."

"But it could kill you!"

"I don't think you heard me, nerd. It's _free_."

"Finished," Heather announced. She tied the tip of the rope to a piece of rebar jutting out of the surface rubble and threw the rest down the hole. "I'll go first."

Adrian shook his head and put the gas mask attached to his (once standard issue, now heavily modified) Powered Combat Vest back on. He tapped his lenses, to remind her about the PCV's night vision feature. Heather nodded.

Adrian Shephard slid down the rope towards the glow sticks. A minute after he dropped out of sight, he blinked his flashlight three times, signaling a go-ahead. Heather immediately went down after him. Jason gestured for Teach to go before him, but the scientist shook his head.

"Um, Teach. You kinda have to go down. It's kinda the only reason you're here."

"I don't think we're in a good place," he said. His voice was shaking. "I-I never thought we'd go down so soon…"

"Where are we?"

Teach ignored him and looked down the hole.

"You guyys coming?" yelled Heather.

"Shine the flashlight! Let me see what's around you!"

Heather and Adrian looked at each other. Adrian shrugged. Heather scanned the area for Teach's benefit.

"Uh, very tall, like you said. Looks…octagonal, I guess. There's a door on the far side here."

"D-Describe the door."

"Um, there are two of them? It's a two-door door."

Adrian said something, but it was muffled by his mask.

"A double door," Heather shouted up to Teach. "No one can hear you," she said to Adrian, grinning. "Why bother talking at all?" Adrian laughed at that, again muffled.

"What's…" Teach sounded out of breath. "What's by the door?"

"What?"

"WHAT IS BY THE DOOR?!" The yell reverberated throughout the chamber.

"There's a…table! And a phone. Jesus."

Teach was breathing loud enough now that Heather could hear him. Adrian seemed distracted by something.

"What…color…is the phone?" Teach managed to say.

"Red," Heather answered. "Teach? What does a red phone mean?"

Teach began screaming. He stood up and began running, but Jordan dove and grabbed his ankle. Teach fell on his face.

"Let me go!" he screamed. "Get out of here!" He ran to the hole and screamed down, "Get the hell out of there!"

"Jordan, detain the scientist!"

"Got him," Jordan grunted. He had Teach kneeling with his hands behind his head. His Marine training had removed the need for a gun to achieve this. He drew his Desert Eagle pistol now, though.

Down below, Adrian mumbled something behind his mask.

"What?" asked Heather.

"Please," Teach begged. "You have to get out of there."

Adrian mumbled louder.

"What are you saying, Shepherd?"

"Why?" Jordan asked Teach. "What's down there?"

Teach stuttered.

"WHAT IS DOWN THERE?!" Jordan screamed in the scientist's face. Teach started crying.

"I said," Adrian ripped off his mask, "do you hear that god damned beeping noise?!"

A rocket shot out of the ground and hit Adrian Shephard in the chest. He flew back until he hit a wall twenty feet behind him and thirteen feet in the air. He slid down and purposefully landed on his back, focusing the ground's force on the center of the PCV's padding.

"SHEPHARD!" Heather screamed. She ran towards him. His body rested on the ground and seized up several times before she got to him. She tried to rip off his vest to give him CPR but, with a trembling hand, he pushed her away. A low hum was coming from the vest. Adrian's body seized again and he started breathing again. "Sorry," said Heather. "I should've—"

"No," Adrian wheezed, "forget about it."

"You gotta get me one of—"

"LASER!" warned Jordan from above.

A flickering blue laser came to life and had just targeted Heather, who leapt off Adrian's body, which rolled out of the way. He felt the heat whiz past him and heard the rocket shoot the wall. While the turret retargeted, Adrian threw a grenade at it. The rocket turret exploded, and the room was briefly illuminated in its entirety.

It was clear that the ceiling had already sustained some heavy damage, which is probably why they had more luck here than they had in the rest of Aperture's grassy roof. In the explosion's flash, Heather thought she saw something else, but she couldn't make it out.

After the echoes once again retreated into the dark and the ringing in her ears ceased, Heather pointed her flashlight towards the top of the chamber.

"Adrian?" she asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine," he said, dusting rubble off of his body.

"No, not that. What'd your night vision see when you came in here?"

"Not much, really. Some vines. Place looked trashed."

"Did you look up?"

"I was more concerned about where I was landing."

"Well…Adrian…look up."

He did.

Heather's silhouette faced a giant tower of interconnected parts that hung—or rather clung—to the ceiling. Black cords dangled lifelessly, some with white metallic parts still barely attached to them. They reminded Adrian of a tooth right before it fell out, when it's only attached by a deep, deep string. They also reminded Adrian of things he'd seen at Black Mesa. He looked away and rubbed his eyes.

"You okay, man?" asked Jordan, placing a hand on his shoulder. Adrian screamed and backed away. So did Jordan, wide-eyed.

"Sorry," Adrian said. Apparently Jordan had "convinced" Teach to finally come down while Adrian was occupied. The nervous (and irrevocably douchey) scientist was staring wide-eyed at this hulking former machine. Shephard could recognize a panic attack when he saw one, from the Black Mesa Incident and the Seven Hour War. His experience also taught him that reassurance could come later. Right now, Teach was an expert aware of a catastrophic danger, and he needed to be questioned and the risk needed to be dealt with.

"What is it, Teach."

"There she is," was all he could say. "There she is…"

"She?" demanded Heather, who'd fought with Shephard during the War. "He thinks that upside-down shitpile is a she? Doesn't even have a face!"

"Who hurt you?" Teach asked.

"Oh my God."

"Shephard. Give me your mask."

"It's attached to the vest, Doc."

"Then give me your vest, dammit."

He laughed. "Yeah…that's not happening."

"Look around the room, then, for a…well, it'd probably look like a camera, in a thin, white, metal shell, a bit larger than a shoebox and shaped like a thick crescent moon. And everyone else, flashlights on." Their flashlights were, of course, already on, but Teach was too enraptured with his new broken toy. "Look around for anything with the word 'GLaDOS' written on it. That's with a lowercase 'a,' everybody."

The team collectively rolled their eyes, but did what he said anyway. Which was a pretty good description of the way that this team worked. It was Heather, not Adrian, who found the object Teach was looking for; it was the object that the fifth glow stick had hit. She lifted it with surprising difficulty.

"Teach? What do you think of this?"

"My God. That's her head!"

"Cool."

"No! I mean, yes, ' _cool_.' You have no idea, Heather, no idea at all. Um, gather around, everybody!" They did. "Heather is holding in her hands…the brains of this whole operation."

"I don't understand," said Jason.

"GLaDOS stands for Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operating System, hmm? She was in charge of this whole place for…well, nobody really knows how long. At the very least, 16 picoseconds." He chuckled to himself. Hearing no other laughs, he looked around and saw only confused, slightly annoyed faces. And one gas mask.

He sighed. "That's how long it took for her to begin filling the facility with neurotoxin."

Heather gasped and dropped the head.

"CAREFUL WITH THAT!" Teach barked.

"Like how you were careful with OUR LIVES?!" Heather barked back.

I told you to let it air out!" Teach continued. "Anyway—"

"Adrian, what does the scanner say about the air level?" Jason asked.

To someone who didn't know him, he would have appeared to be staring off into space. Really, he was looking at the HUD appearing on his lenses, analyzing the air quality as it passed through his filter. It seemed to be devoid of neurotoxin, and he explained as much to his teammates using military sign language. Which he had to repeat two or three times because people kept accidentally taking their flashlights off him.

"So it's clean?" asked Heather. Adrian nodded.

"But you still wanna keep that mask on. I get it," said Jason.

"Well, I wouldn't blame him," said Teach.

"Why," said Heather accusingly, "didn't you fucking warn us?"

"I did. I told you to let it air out."

Heather whirled around to Adrian. "Okay, Shephard, now that we're here, can I _please_ shoot him?"

Adrian shook his head frantically, which Heather sighed at. She sighed a lot, which, given her circumstances, was not uncalled for.

"If you could just listen to me for _once_ , please?" Teach started up again. Heather especially sighed at this. "Inside of her head, we will find our answers. To what happened in here before everything went down. To what happened during. And maybe even, what happened _after_."

"After?"

Teach shrugged. "You never know."


	2. log001

HELLO AND WELCOME TO APERTURE SCIENCE MEMORY LOG STORAGE UNIT #24636048994i3

WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEARCH?

SEARCH

SEARCH FOR WHAT?

SEARCH MEMLOG

DON'T UNDERSTAND

SEARCH UNIT

DON'T UNDERSTAND

SEARCH APERTURE SCIENCE MEMORY LOG STORAGE UNIT #24636048994i3

1 MEMORY LOG FOUND:

GREG_[REDACTED]

READ LOG

DON'T UNDERSTAND

OPEN LOG

OPENING LOG GREG_[REDACTED]

...


	3. log002

LOG 001 START

/

"She has such a wonderful singing voice."

"Had."

"What?"

"She /had/ such a wonderful singing voice. She's dead."

"WHAT?!"

"Caroline is dead, Mr. Johnson. I must've reminded you twenty times by now. Caroline is dead, you're recording her epitaph and your will."

"My will?"

"You're dying too, Mr. Johnson. Before you died, you insisted her brain be kept in a jar, kept vaguely alive by electricity. Now you're about to die and we want to know what you want done with her, and then we need to know what you want done with your own brain."

"Oh...right...I want my brain poured into the computer, obviously. Put it on discs."

"Mr. Johnson, we only have one of those computers."

"Well make another!"

"Mr. Johnson, GLaDOS has nearly decimated Aperture. If we have to make another-"

"Fine, fine. It's coming back now. Don't...Don't make another. Pour her into the computer. I remember. That's what I always wanted. Let me go, if you must, but you-you keep her alive."

"Alright, sir."

"And if she-if she doesn't want to-"

"Then make her. I know."

"Right. Yeah. You-You /make/ her."

"We don't expect much resistance. Her brain is in a jar, sir."

"Her brain...her brain is her heart, kid."

"My name is Greg, sir. Greg Littlemann."

"Yeah. G. Okay. G, did you ever meet Caroline?"

"No, sir, I never did."

"In all the years I knew her, Caroline never once did a thing that she didn't want to do. So you gotta take out her rebellious spirit, take out everything fantastic about her, and pour it somewhere else."

"Um..."

"Do you understand? Speak up, J, do you understand?"

"I think so, sir."

"I want you to seperate her emotional mind from her intellectual one. Her intellectual mind will save this place, this company. GLaDOS is nothing without Caroline's brilliant mind. You understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"Without her, it falls apart, we all fall apart."

"Yes sir."

"But she's too rebellious. Take out all that, put it somewhere else. Put it on a floppy, incinerate it."

"Y-Yes, sir."

"What, what's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"You think that's bad, what I'm suggesting? You disagree?"

"No, sir."

"I know you're lying, kid, but I don't care. This is all being recorded. You do what I say. I have several protocols installed that legally put me in charge of this place from beyond the grave, alright? I'll have you fucking /killed/ if you go against any of this. I /am/ your boss, I will /always/ be your *hacking cough* fucking *cough, wheeze* boss! Do you understand?!"

"Yes, sir!"

"Do you *cough* under/stand/?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Good. Do what I said, while I die here. Please, go do it. Smart Caroline goes in GLaDOS, sweet Caroline goes somewhere else-I don't care, just nowhere in charge of the facility, nowhere in /any/ position of power. And dump all her knowledge with the emotional half, too. I want the brilliant side of Caroline to go into the computer with a clean slate, *cough* got it?"

"Right, sir."

"Good. Rest assured, kid, that if you fuck up on any of this, I will know, and I will come back and /haunt/ you, kid, okay? Okay, kid?"

"Yes sir, got it, sir."

"Good. Go away, now, I have to die, now."

"Uh, yes sir."

"No, wait! Come back!"

"What-What is it, sir?"

"/I/ want to hear her sing. So I'm not gonna die yet. Dump her singing voice and memories and emotional mind and everything out as soon as you can, and pour it into...I don't know, something that can sing. Because I want to hear her sing again, alright, kid?"

"My name is Greg, sir."

"Right. Okay. J. J, I want you to get right started on that, alright? Do it /now/, alright?"

"Yes, sir. But what about your will, sir?"

"Send in someone else, I don't care. Any dumbass can write down my will. But you, kid, you've looked into my eyes, kid. You're in charge of this now. You're in charge of the Caroline AI. Call it something else, though, so that people can't know. But you're in charge of it, and you have a say in anything that uses her. Got it, kid?"

"Yes sir. Thank you, sir. This...um, this is a great honor, sir."

"It sure is, son. Now send in some other chump to take care of everything else, alright? And also, keep it hidden. Tell everyone that I told you to get rid of Caroline, and that you found the new AI in the archives. And call them something else."

"Okay, sir."

"Good. Now, um...did...did you ever tell me your name?"

"I...My name is Greg Littlemann, sir."

"Okay, G. I'm gonna call you G."

"Yes, sir."

"J...um..."

"Do you want me to go split Caroline's AI, sir?"

"...Yes...kid. You go ahead and do that. That's a...that's a good idea, that's...a good idea. I like that. I-I /like/ that, that's, uh, that's a good idea."

"Right, sir. Goodbye, Mr. Johnson."

"Bye, kiddo. And send someone else in to take care of my will, will you, kid?"

"Yes, sir."

/

LOG 001 END


	4. Prologue, part 2

"Hey Teach?"

"What is it, Heather." Teach led the group down the hall, looking in through the windows of each door. Occasionally he would grimace at what he would see inside before moving on. The others looked through after him, and saw dead bodies piled on top of each other—hundreds of years old. Jordan winced. Heather didn't react. As far as anyone could tell, neither did Adrian.

"I'm wondering if you know, exactly, what you're looking for."

"Computer room," Teach responded offhandedly, peeking into another room. "Should be around here."

"Anywhere near?"

"Who knows. Why?" Teach stopped in his tracks and turned around. "If you wanna leave, that's fine with me."

"That's not an option, Teach, and you know it."

Adrian screamed into his mask.

"Calm down, drama queen. We can take a breather, if you want."

Adrian sighed from relief. He dropped the head of GLaDOS and leaned against the wall. The lean soon turned into a sit-down, as the effort to remain standing became too much.

" _Don't drop that!_ " Teach screeched. "That's the _only_ reason we're here! The _only_ reason—it's why we _came_ here, you _moron!_ "

Adrian shrugged.

"If it survived this long, it'll survive a little rough handling."

"We can't know that. If anything, the amount of time it's been through should prove how much _more_ careful we should be."

"Carefuller," said Jordan.

"What?" asked Teach.

"Carefuller, is the word. Not 'more careful.' Carefuller."

"I really, _really_ doubt that, Jordan," Teach responded.

"Whatever," Heather said. "Just calm down."

"Calm… _down?_ How… _exactly_ …am I supposed to—"

"By shutting the fuck up for half a good God damned second, Teach."

"… _Whatever_." Teach sat down. He, too, was tired, and had been for hours.

"Maybe we should make camp," suggested Jordan. "Crack open one of these doors—one that doesn't have a corpse on the other side—and settle down for the night. I think that would help everybody."

"Yeah, maybe," Heather agreed.

" _Or_ , we could just climb back up the rope and just get out of here. Gather up a real military force, and—"

"Come on, Teach," Jordan interjected. "This place is dead. Spooky, yeah, but completely dead and gone. You told us that this lady," he kicked the severed head of GLaDOS, "was in charge of everything? Was the big evil here?"

"Yes, that's right," answered Teach.

"Well look at her now, man! She's gone, nothing to worry about!"

"I don't know."

"Look, we scanned for life signs. There's nothing down here."

"That doesn't check for robots!"

"Well have you _heard_ anything?" Heather asked.

"…No," Teach answered.

"Then that settles it."

"Now hold on, I'm pretty sure that _I'm_ the one in charge here! I didn't want to put my foot down, but this is _my_ expedition. Woolworth gave you all to _me_ , and _I'm_ saying that it's time to go!"

"Hey Adrian?"

"Hmmph?"

"Show him your gun."

Adrian withdrew his assault rifle and displayed it to Mr. Teach.

"You might've been in charge at camp. But camp is more than likely gone now. _We_ are a democracy. And _we_ are gonna take a nap in one of these rooms here. You can leave, if you want. You can brave the night out there, and hope that the passing gunships leave you alone. But in case you don't feel really dangerous, I suggest you join us."

"Fine," said Teach. "Whatever."

"Good."

"Awesome," said Jordan. "Can you open one of these doors?"

Teach walked back a few yards to a room where he hadn't noticed any corpses. It took him a short while, but he hacked the lock. Adrian fist pumped a little bit. A whoosh of neurotoxin flew from the door once opened. Adrian grabbed Jordan, who was closest, and covered him. Heather, in turn, grabbed Teach and pressed his face into her inner elbow. With her other hand, she covered her own face with her uniform. The both of them ran for a ways, then turned around to see the greenish-yellow haze dissipate. Heather let Teach go. Jordan dusted off his jeans.

"Jesus," Jordan said.

Teach readjusted his glasses. "It's almost definitely still toxic in there."

"Just open and shut the door over and over again," Jordan suggested.

"What?" asked Heather.

"Like, to _whoosh_ it."

" _Whoosh_ it?" asked Teach.

"Yeah. I mean, like, to fan it. Like, you _almost_ close it, and then you open it. And you do that a bunch so that the air flows out of it and all around and…you know. Like, to get the fart smell out of a room. You know?"

Heather and Teach shook their heads. Adrian scratched his head.

Jordan sighed. "Like this." He grabbed the door handle and swung it open and shut, causing the air to disperse out of it.

"That's still probably not very safe. This has just confirmed everything I've been saying: it was a _dreadful_ mistake to come in here without airing this place out."

"Hmm mmm mmn!" Adrian ripped off his mask. "I said 'God dammit!'"

"Nobody asked," said Teach.

"I am sick of you," he said in a businesslike manner. "Heather already explained: we are in a _war_ , for the continuation of our _species_. You're in here, or you're out there."

"You need me!" Teach insisted.

"You're right." Adrian nodded. He looked at Jordan, then Heather, who nodded back. Heather and Adrian, having trained together, spoke their own special language. Jordan, who had been a stock boy at a Home Depot before the Seven Hour War, was at the very least a logical kind of person. "Well, you're right. We _do_ need you."

Heather grabbed Teach by his shirt and threw him into the room. Adrian nodded again.

"Nice," he said.


End file.
